I was not looking forward to the trip. Weeks before, one of the daughters of a good friend of my mom texted me to say that her mother was dying of pancreatic cancer and she hoped to say goodbye to my mom. The two connected over the phone and agreed…

Can a single penny make you rich? On its face, the question is ridiculous. Of course one penny can’t make a person rich. And, yet, if you were given one penny after another, you must acknowledge that after the one hundredth penny you’d have one dollar. After the one thousandth…

If society is to prosper long-term, many of us (myself included) will need to redefine our definition of wealth. I say this not as some left-leaning, anti-capitalist, I say it as a professional futurist who is deeply concerned about the current trajectory of contemporary society. In my pursuit of attempting…

I turned 57 this past Saturday, July 17th. As a gift, my wife, knowing that I prefer “experiences” over material gifts, planned a hike for us through Willow State Park in Wisconsin. Midway through our hike, we stopped for a picnic in a park where she snapped this picture of…

“A time is coming,” said St. Anthony the Great, “when men will go mad, and when they see someone who is not mad, they will attack him, saying, “You are mad; you are not like us.” Although the Egyptian monk uttered those words in the 4th Century, they are as…

I live in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The city is blessed with a number of lakes and one of the best park systems in the world. As such, I frequently choose to walk into my office. Today, I strolled through an area known as “The Bird Sanctuary” and observed two red-headed pileated…

“The soul does not grow by addition but by subtraction.” — Meister Eckhart “Every block of stone has a statue inside it and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it.” — Michelangelo Mark Twain once said, “The two most important days in your life are the day…

“There are one hundred people striking at the branch … to every one person that is striking at the root.” As an author, speaker, change management consultant, and futurist, Thoreau’s quote has always resonated with me on a number of different levels. But what if it’s not true? What if…

I’ve been aware of the plight of monarch butterflies for more than five years and, in response, I planted a modest milkweed garden, attempted to make Minneapolis a monarch butterfly sanctuary, and started a Facebook group — Bring Back a Billion Butterflies — to help educate others about the looming…